Joys of New York

If there is one thing I miss more than anything about living in NY it is the milk. I don't know why, but milk always seems fresher and delicious here. I grew up as a kid in Utica, NY and my mother would shove all three of us kids into the stroller(or drag us by the hand when we got older) to the nearest Byrne Dairy (about 4 blocks from our old house) so that we could pick up a half gallon of chocolate milk, a half gallon of 2% milk, and ice cream bars all around (they were always on the house because the people there loved us) It was something that we looked forward to all of the time, and I remember it was because when we didn't go on the outings dad would bring home a plastic jug of milk, but when we went with our mother we were able to get the milk in glass bottles. I had always thought that this was the coolest thing. Milk to me had always come in plastic of cardboard containers and the glass was something that I thought reminded me of the good old days when people used to get milk delivered. We never did of course and I wasn't even alive during that time. I thought it was the coolest thing to relive and old way of life, and was sad when we moved to West Winfield and getting Byrne Dairy milk became even more of a luxury.

The stories of milk's past though were not lost, and my mother told me about a cut that was in our outside wall and how that was where an access panel for the milkman had been covered up once milk deliveries had stopped being door to door. My mother told me stories of how people used to get their milk delivered in those access panels and would leave the milkman money in the panel and he would open a small door from the outside and place the milk in it. Somehow the milk stayed cold until someone came to get it, possibly an hour or so after he dropped it off, and the people of the house would enjoy the milk. There were times I really wished I had lived back then because I think it would be neat to grow up as a kid and watch the milkman drop off the milk in the panel, and possibly even play a few jokes on him, as kids like to do. But I was never that lucky, and had to simply settle for the plastic bottles that generic stores would dish out. It simply was not feasible for us to use a half gallon a week anymore anyway. I think at one point we were going through 3 gallons a week thanks to my brother and his love for milk.

Now that we have moved back, Nick works in Utica, so I make sure that he stops in New Hartford and gets a half gallon of the good stuff. Stuff that brings me back to my childhood and beyond. Plus it has the added benefit of keeping my bones strong, and it seems to taste better out of the glass bottle.

Above are the bottles we get now. (we still get 2% looking at going to 1% because it tastes so rich compared to other milk) and also what the compartments of the old days look like. A door on the inside for access of the housekeepers, and placement of the money and old bottles to be taken away, and this one doesn't show it well, but there is supposed to be a door on the outside as well for the milkman to deliver, and close the door so nobody stole the milk. Both of the doors could be locked from inside the house to keep creepies from entering the home lol.